REVIEW: Keyhole [2012]

“I’m returning what was lost” Like the crackled overlay of two radio stations playing from a dial meticulously tuned equidistantly between them, Guy Maddin‘s haunting Keyhole concurrently projects the tenuous holds of reality, dream, and afterlife onto its fixed environment inside the Picks’ residence. Apparently the return of the household’s patriarch after an extended absence, we watch as the shadows, walls, and objects within stir up ingrained memories he had otherwise forgotten. But as this stranger shakes the cloud of erased time, the tale shifts to take the form of…

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REVIEW: My Dad is 100 Years Old [2005]

“Like is not the measure of right” I have caught the Guy Maddin bug. And it is all My Dad is 100 Years Old’s fault. Is Isabella Rossellini’s love letter to her father overdone, pretentious, and unnecessary? Probably yes on all counts, however, none of that detracts from the achievement it also creates. Why film an interview, static and uninteresting, when you can hire an auteur to use his eye and add a flair for the dramatic? Cinema is about drawing the viewer in, right—to cause the audience to think,…

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